So for those of you who do not follow Formula One, the former Honda team has been taken over by Ross Brawn, former technical head of Honda and Ferrari before that.

A smart man indeed.

Except it seems when it comes to graphic design, this is the teams logo:

Now, I do quite like the black and yellow swoosh, but only because it reminds me of a livery for an F1 car I designed at High School many moons ago. For me the logo itself is just horribly disjointed, I am guessing the forward motion from ‘a’ onwards is to hint at speed, but to me it breaks the name up, the ‘Br’ looks lost and seperate and even at this size and resolution the treatment on ‘GP’ doesn’t work for me either.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect this to be some sort of design masterpiece (it’s not like most of the other teams’ are much to write home about) and presumably it has been done rather quickly (the website certainly has) but it just strikes me as a rather lost opportunity, especially when for those outwith the sport the name ‘Brawn’ doesnt have the luxury of meaning anything to the man in the street (as opposed to say the Red Bull team) and indeed is probably more likely to be thought of as a make of shaver, it would have been a good opportunity to set about building a brand for the team, not just throwing together a rather generic looking logo.

2 things led me here, 1 the sad passing of the fantastic Designers Republic and 2 the posting of an article on wipeout by my good friends at Square Go Magazine (check it out)

Now for those who don’t know or don’t remember, Wipeout is a series of games based on anti gravity racing that first appeared on the Playstation and Saturn. Frankly to my mind the series was the first game to feature real graphic design and continues to have what I think is the slickest design ethos of any game series. Of course it was the Designers Republic who did the design work on Wipeout. I did then and still do love the style they used in the various incarnations and now that they are sadly gone I just thought I’d draw some attention to it!

(Sorry for the long gap, been busy working on my site and doing work for clients! More soon!)

Now, while I totally agree with the concept of doing work for free on the hope of being paid for it etc. is wrong and quite damaging, I quite like the idea of this, granted it may turn out that all the winners are professional designers, but who said we had to stop doing design for fun in our own time? Also something like this will no doubt inspire a few kids along the way into the industry.

I think I may come up with a few ideas for this myself, as it is quite an interesting brief, and for me personally one of the best parts of being a designer is seeing my work out in the big wide world. A coin would be brilliant!

I am curious to see what others think about this however, will you enter? Or are you dead against it?

They say designing for yourself is the hardest task of all. They were right!

The name Ink was the result of a discussion with my PR guru associate Dave, at the time he was hatching plans for his own solo project and had come up with the name ‘Digital Links,’ which I felt was too unwieldy and just didn’t sound right to me. So off I went looking for a suitable name for that, firstly, as his primary clients are games companies I went looking for some Far Eastern inspiration (something I did a lot at University, but thats another story for another time!) but this failed to produce anything of merit. Eventually I suggested simply ‘Link’ on it’s own and this formed the basis of the early brand.

However at this stage we decided to aim to bring our two developing businesses together, I reasoned operating with different names to then suddenly switch to a third name would cause confusion amongst clients, affect google rankings, email etc. I quiet liked the simplicity of ‘Link’ but it didn’t really say much to me about design. So I set about coming up with a name with some common ground.

It then occurred to me to drop the ‘L.’ and there we have it, ‘Ink.’ To me it has common ground with both design and pr, as well as future areas of interest like marketing, advertising etc. It’s simple, but memorable and, I think, allows for a strong graphic identity.

Back to designing for yourself, the problem with it I see is that it’s a never ending process, there’s nobody to say ‘great I love it, leave it be,’ a never ending cycle of adjustments, modifications and restarts! But for now I am happy with what I have, I’m not quite set on the colouring yet, but I don’t need to be until the proper site goes live and I get business cards etc. It’s been kept deliberately simple as a) I’m not really into the whole web 2.0 drop shadow type stuff and b) I intend to be used across a wide range of mediums and sizes, simple logos fit this role best!

Eventually this will find itself a custom home on my website, but since that doesnt exist yet this will do for now!

So I’m Scott, I’m a graphic designer from Edinburgh, Scotland and this is my blog. Basically it will revolve around two things; the business I am in the process of setting up (Ink) and design in general. I’d always wanted to set up a design blog and I figured incorporating my experiences of starting out in my own business etc would be a good thing to add in, maybe even inspiring people along the way!

I guess a general scene setting update is in order! I left my previous job with a creative agency just before Christmas and returned to Edinburgh (I’m from here) to set up on my own. I have some fairly big plans for this, firstly will hopefully be merging with a friends PR business under the Ink banner.

So here we are at the very beginning, the logo has been designed, the sites being worked on and discussions with what will hopefully be my first clients are underway! Exciting stuff!